Would you have predicted this?
Saturday, Dec 2 2017

Would you have predicted this? Here is an excerpt from an article in the AARP Bulletin, November, 2017.

Where you are born may be associated with your risk for developing dementia, even if you later move far away, a new study suggests.

The report in JAMA Neurology* found higher dementia rates in those born in nine states,(mostly in the South) that also have high rates of stroke deaths.

Researchers examined medical records of 7,423 members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California. Records were first collected between 1964 and 1973, and reviewed again for dementia diagnoses between 1996 and 2015.

They found that the risk of dementia — adjusted for age, sex, and race — was 28 percent higher among people born in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

“We found place of birth to be a robust risk factor for dementia,” wrote the study’s authors.*Journal of the American Medical Association

Do you see anything interesting about the list of dementia-prone states? They all are red states.

Red: States carried by the Republicans in all four elections

Pale Red: States carried by the Republicans in three of the four elections

Purple: States carried by each party twice in the four elections

Pale Blue: States carried by the Democrats in three of the four elections

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3 Responses to Would you have predicted this?

I wish I could tell you all of the awful things that are in it, but I’m still reading the bill myself. The Republicans released the bill only a couple of hours before the votes started last night. There were no hearings. There was no debate. In fact, they were literally sending around edits in hand-written chicken scratch minutes before we had to vote.

But we do know that the big Republican donors are popping champagne today. This 500-page bill is a massive tax giveaway to billionaires and giant corporations, paid for by America’s working families. It attacks college students. It sabotages the Affordable Care Act and threatens health care for millions of Americans. It opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling in Alaska. And who knows what else is buried in there?

That’s not how you make tax policy, health care policy, or any other policy in the United States of America.

This Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t work for working families. It works for corporate lobbyists and campaign donors in backroom deals and 1:30 AM votes. This is corruption – plain and simple. And this corruption is hollowing out America’s middle class and tearing down our democracy.

You might also consider that industrialization and scientific progress in general took place in the northern latitudes world around. This isn’t due to IQ but to the rougher/colder climate in the north which forces greater ingenuity to survive.

Actually not surprising at all. There have been several studies that link higher levels of intellect at an early age and higher levels of linguistic ability at older ages to lower incidence of dementia. It’s the old use it or lose it. The JAMA results and the fact that red states are not very fond of public education, science, or the arts (relative to blue states) would seem to be more than a coincidence. It might also explain Trump and a lot of Trump supporters as well.